


Mercy

by lopingloup



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Gen, Graphic Violence, Hurt No Comfort, Magic, No Character Death, Stoned, Stoning, Whump, magical whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25667248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lopingloup/pseuds/lopingloup
Summary: A Red Paladin hunts down a fae, until the fae can't run anymore.(If you've seen ep1, there's no spoilers here for anything later than that <3)
Relationships: Original Character & Original Character
Kudos: 16





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> *collects a new fandom* :3

As they’d attacked, some fae stood and fought and some scattered into the forests, into river boats, into the long grass or crops; running and hiding wherever they could.

Rodon stood gasping, the blood on his lips staining his teeth. The fae he’d killed was collapsed on her knees at his feet like she was begging him, her forehead to the floor. Rodon swallowed the blood in his mouth, blood from the fae’s arterial spray, and forced himself to move around her as the clamour of the fight went on around him.

A tall, lithe fae darted past, breaking from the cover of the fae’s huts and making for the woods at incredible pace. The male had hooves instead of feet, which sprayed up clods of earth as he disappeared into the trees. But Rodon was high on death and righteous revenge and he took off after the fae at a sprint, his bloody sword clenched tight in his fist and his Red Paladin robes flapping against his legs.

The fae ran like someone who knew the land, but Rodon had stamina born of stubborn determination. He had decided that every single fae would get what they deserved and God strike him down if he didn’t accomplish that.

The fae’s hooves made him faster by far than Rodon on hard ground, but the woods were slick with the previous night’s rain and the fae skidded with a panicked yell on the mud-covered ground. He stayed upright, just about, but it didn’t take much for Rodon to catch up with him.

With a cry of victory, Rodon threw himself forwards, snatching the collar of the fae’s green tunic and yanking him back hard enough that he heard the fabric tear at the same time the fae choked.

Slamming down on top of the fae to pin him, Rodon brought his sword up with both hands, only for the fae to kick out violently with a scream. The fae’s hoof hit Rodon’s thigh and skidded off, but Rodon saw white and yelled out at the sharp, awful agony of it. If the fae’s hoof had hit Rodon’s leg squarely, Rodon thought the force would’ve broken the bone. As it was, Rodon couldn’t move for the shocked pain of it and grabbed his thigh with a bitten back snarl.

The fae tried to scramble backwards and away from him but, fuelled by animalistic pain and fury, Rodon lurched forwards to grab the fae by his coiled braid and slammed him face-first into the rutted ground. He stayed out of the way of the fae’s kicking legs, his thigh throbbing, and brought his sword back, intending to drive it deep into the fae’s side.

But the fae twisted suddenly sideways and grabbed the sword blade with his bare hands.

“Stop!” he screamed, mud plastered to his cheek. “Please!” Blood ran down his arms in rivulets from where Rodon’s sword sliced into the fae’s palms and Rodon stared at him in shock, the fae’s wild, wide eyes staring back at him. No-one’d ever just grabbed the blade of his sword like that, like cutting up their hands was nothing.

Rodon yanked his sword back and the fae released it with a yelp, clutching their mangled hands to their chest as they stared up at Rodon, visibly shaking. Flexing his tight shoulders, Rodon tightened his grip on his sword and tensed.

But he never got the chance to stab it forwards. The fae’s uncanny brown-red eyes went unfocused and then something hit Rodon on the back, making him flinch.

Grunting, he whipped around fast enough to see a small stone drop to the ground. He could feel the slight ache in his shoulder where it’d landed, but scanning the low bracken, Rodon couldn’t see who’d thrown it.

He looked warily back at the fallen fae, but he was lying collapsed in the mud, staring at Rodon in shock or fear.

Another stone hit Rodon, this time in the back of the head.

“Fuck!” He lurched to look around him, but there was no-one. “Come out! Fucking cowardly fae scum!”

Rodon stilled, staring at the ground with his mouth open. A stone, larger this time, rose off the forest floor right in front of him.

“No,” Rodon muttered.

The stone shot towards him and hit him in the stomach hard enough to make him stagger backwards. More stones and rocks and pebbles started to rise and Rodon cried out as they pelted him, trying to cover his head.

“Stop!” he turned to yell at the fae. “Stop it!”

A big stone his jaw and he coughed on blood, another striking his knee and he folded to the floor, arms clamped around his head as stones and rocks hit him like a swung mallet, the jagged ones cutting like arrowheads.

“STOP!” His sword had fallen out of his hands and he pressed his head between his knees. A fist-sized stone _thwacked_ into his side and his rib audibly cracked, before the sound of the rocks hitting him was drowned out by his screaming.

The pain put Rodon close to unconsciousness, so that it was a while before he heard the soft, “No, no, no,” being repeated between sobs somewhere nearby.

Stones were no longer hitting him, he realised dizzily, gasped out a groan of pain before he tried to lift himself up to kneeling.

The pain in his side and his head and every inch of him made him retch, and he braced one arm on the ground to stay upright, the other arm curled protectively around his ribs. Lifting his head, he found the fae close by and he tensed, looking around for his sword.

But the fae wasn’t even aware of him, but had his head in his hands as he rocked back and forth, chanting, “No,” over and over, like a mantra or a plea.

Rodon still wanted his sword in his hand and he tried to reach for it, only for a groan to spill out of him at the horrific pain in his side and chest.

The fae’s head shot up and Rodon froze. They stared at each other.

“You could’ve killed me,” Rodon’s voice cracked, his lips with tacky with blood; his own this time.

“I’m sorry!” the fae blurted. He was shaking violently, and didn’t look older than twenty. Just a youth, a youth with hellish ocre eyes, the Devil’s hooves in place of human feet, and the power to stone a man to death with his mind.

But he hadn’t. He’d stopped before Rodon had been killed and Rodon didn’t understand it. The fae were evil. They killed for the love of it, they killed over the smallest slight, and they wilfully killed innocents. They were enemies of men and of God. This fae may be a youth, but fae were born with a bloodthirst like that of wolves. So then, why wasn’t Rodon dead?

“You were going to k-kill me,” the fae choked out. Rodon stared at the fae, his arm curled around his side and his shallow breaths making him flinch on every inhale. “You burned all our homes, y- you’re killing us.”

“You deserve it,” Rodon snarled.

Every stone around Rodon rose six inches into the air, and Rodon’s skin turned to ice as he threw his arms over his head, screwing his eyes shut as he braced for pain, more pain.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” the fae sounded shaky but certain and very slowly, Rodon lifted his head.

The stones sank slowly down again as the fae buried his head in his elbow and cried. This time when Rodon went slowly for his sword, the fae didn’t notice, even as Rodon hissed in pain.

It was only when he staggered unsteadily to his feet that the fae looked up and his eyes went large. His lips were parted but he couldn’t seem to speak as he stared up at Rodon. Rodon’s sword was in his hand, and there was a fae lad, weak and defenceless in front of him, and yet Rodon did nothing. He couldn’t make himself raise his sword arm. Why had the fae spared him? _Why_?

“Did you run out of, of magic? Of power?”

The fae squinted in confusion. “What-?”

Rodon glared at him, his sword shifting at his side. “Why didn’t you kill me?” he demanded. “Did the magic exhaust you, is that it, boy?”

The fae’s shock and fear slid into a frown. Rodon flinched as the stones lifted again, every single one in a fifty yard radius or more, and Rodon swallowed thickly. Clearly the fae’s powers weren’t exhausted at all.

“Why then?” Rodon croaked.

The stones dropped with a thud that Rodon felt through his boots. The fae shrugged and was silent.

A distant shout from behind them, back towards the fae village, made Rodon start and the fae jolt and jump up. Though he was young, he was taller than Rodon when standing and Rodon leaned warily back.

“Tell me why!” he snapped. “You’re weak, that’s it? You’re sick at the sight of blood?” A fae who couldn’t stand blood? It made no sense.

The fae backed up a step, and then another, his gaze moving behind Rodon. Rodon glanced around and saw the familiar red of his Paladin brothers’ robes. For once, he didn’t welcome their arrival.

The fae’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I… didn’t want to kill anyone,” he whispered, before he turned and ran.

Maybe it was pain, his cracked rib, but this time Rodon just watched him go. The fae cut through the bracken and disappear deeper into the woods, heading south, and he felt uncertainty for the first time since his two younger brothers had been killed. The young fae had taken mercy on him when he could so easily have stoned Rodon to death.

By the time his Paladin brothers pulled up close to him, pain had driven Rodon to his knees and the fae was far gone.

“Which way’d it go?” one demanded of him.

Rodon raised his arm to the north and watched his brothers ride hard after a fae that’d gone in the opposite direction.

As he rode away on a borrowed horse, Rodon didn’t allow himself to look back, as if he could put what’d happened out of his mind for good. But his injuries throbbed in time with his heart, and Rodon knew that he now owed a life debt to the fae, and he wouldn’t be able to forget that.

**Author's Note:**

> Who else is as obsessed with Cursed as me?? :D


End file.
